


let them talk

by ilgaksu



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: All The President's Men (1976) Fusion, Alternate Universe - 1970s, M/M, Movie Fusion, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-02 22:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15805683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: “Morning,” Lance says, “Deadline’s in two hours. You might wanna get up.”In the daylight sneaking between the gaps in the greying lace curtains, his eyes are very blue.“Disgusting,” Keith mutters, and rolls over.





	let them talk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kevinkevinson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kevinkevinson/gifts).



> For Casey.

  1. _Washington, DC._



 

 

Keith wakes up to see Lance already dressed, shaved and caffeinated. He’s spread all his notes out in fistfuls on the shitty, plasticky motel bedspread. The sound of his typewriter, balanced precariously across his lap, is like gunshot. 

“Morning,” Lance says, “Deadline’s in two hours. You might wanna get up.” 

In the daylight sneaking between the gaps in the greying lace curtains, his eyes are very blue. 

“Disgusting,” Keith mutters, and rolls over. 

“Biased,” Lance singsongs, the typewriter never ceasing in its punching rhythm. He’s still looking at Keith, and not at the keys. Show off. 

The thing is, Keith knows Lance was taught by his sister, who went to a typist school out in Manhattan after her divorce, and he knows this because Lance is a child of the Sixties, of flower power parents, and so he doesn’t understand things like oversharing. It’s the fact he can’t ever separate detail out that makes him such a good goddamn journalist, though: he sees connections in things most people would dismiss as extraneous. 

Sometimes, Keith thinks about what Lance must see when he looks at him - which he does, intently, chin cupped in his hands as he listens to Keith spew theories in late-night diners. He knows Lance must see everything. 

Meanwhile, Keith trips on his own tangled blankets trying to go take a piss. 

“Have some coffee,” Lance advises unsympathetically. He throws Keith a leftover bagel in a brown paper bag. Keith catches it and just as quickly drops it on top of his abandoned bed. 

“I don’t want some coffee,” Keith mutters, “I want some fucking _ peace _ ,” and bangs the bathroom door shut. It’s so flimsy it rattles near clean off its hinges. 

In the end, he takes the coffee, left percolating and congealing on the side, sips it down whilst Lance pulls freshly typed sheets free from the typewriter and gives them to Keith to hold. This part of their ritual is done in silence, or close enough. Lance hums under his breath. Keith yawns. 

That’s the thing: despite everything, they make a good team. 

 

*

 

They hand the article to Shiro in person, swing by his apartment and everything. He reads through it right then and there, stood in his immaculate kitchen, Lance shifting from foot to foot until Keith stands on the one closest just to get him to quit. Lance’s nerves are catching, he swears. Lance shoots him a wounded look but stops. 

“So,” Lance tries into the silence, casting glances around the place, “How’s Adam?” 

Keith winces. 

“We broke up,” Shiro says shortly, and then, before Lance can formulate something to salvage that one, “You’re sure about this?” 

So he’s finished the article then. His gaze, when it turns to them, is gunmetal. 

“We are,” Lance replies before Keith can, pinned under the weight of Shiro’s regard. “The references all check out. The paper trail leads right back to them, Shiro. We just followed it.” 

“Uh huh,” Shiro replies, scrutinising Lance now. “You two are a regular Hansel and Gretel.” 

“I mean,” Lance shrugs, “The breadcrumbs do lead back to a witch. I’ll roll with it if you’re going with it -” 

“We’re sure,” Keith repeats, interrupting. 

“You know we only get one shot at this story,” Shiro warns, for the billionth time, “If we’ve missed even one thing - one way for them to slip through the cracks - they’ll find a slip out through those jail cells like we greased them.” 

“Nice image,” Lance interjects, because he’s unable to help himself. “I’ll take that one with me to breakfast. Political dynasty meets baby oil.” 

“We’ve got them this time, Shiro,” Keith is sure of it. “This isn’t another Sendak.”

“Prepared to stake your career on it? They’re gonna drag you both through the mud as it is.” 

Lance shrugs. 

“Shiro, pal. Listen. I was goddamn  _ ten _ when the Bay of Pigs went down. You think people were real happy to have a Cuban kid in their yearbook after the October Crisis? You think anyone in college was real thrilled to have a card-carrying pinko on the Dean’s List?” 

Shiro turns to Keith. 

“You know me,” Keith says, because Shiro does. Shiro, who found Keith as a freshman - a gay Korean scholarship kid at Columbia, with a chip on his shoulder the size of a whole damn forest - and showed him how there was more than one way to make people sit up and pay attention. “I’m not scared of them.” 

It’s a lie, and they all know it. It’s more like this: Keith’s sense of righteousness outweighs his own self-preservation. Something like that. When Shiro looks at them both, he looks proud. 

“Good,” Shiro says, “Because this going to be one hell of a ride.” 

 

*

 

That night, Keith can’t sleep, so he calls Lance instead. 

“You too, huh,” Lance says, and for a while they both just lie there and listen to each other’s breathing. 

“You wanna come over?” Keith says, after the silence - the anticipation of it, keyed into the anxiety thrumming through his veins - becomes wildly, completely unbearable. 

“You know I was just waiting for you to ask, babe,” Lance says, Keith can hear the smirk, god damn it. “You want me to bring takeout? Vietnamese, right?”

“Do you even have to ask?” Keith says, and hangs up, but not before he catches the beginning of Lance’s laugh. 

 

*

 

Afterwards, Lance retrieves the takeout from Keith’s crappy kitchen table and sits and eats it in his boxers, cross-legged on Keith’s bed like he has any right to be there. Which, Keith supposes, stretching out like a cat, he has kind of earned. 

“You’re not freaking out too much, you know,” Lance says, squinting at him over his pho. “Like, not verbally. Are you doing that getting stuck in your own head thing again?” 

“Sorta,” Keith allows. “You’re just as bad, though.” 

Lance slurps. Keith's pretty sure, on second inspection, those are his boxers. 

“Never said I wasn’t. Hey, dude, if it goes south, we should go somewhere.” 

“Somewhere?” 

“I don’t know, dude, you could meet my parents,” Lance says, like that isn’t the most absurd thing in the world for men like them to say. “They ask about you, you know. If I have friends. If I’m seeing someone.” 

“I’m not your girlfriend, Lance.” 

“And I’m not yours. Cool. Feel like we established that one a while back, but whatever.” Lance’s eyes are absurdly steady. “My parents are like....they were at Woodstock, dude. They’re fine with it. Us.” 

“Us specifically?” 

“I haven’t said anything yet, but like, they met Veronica’s girlfriend and it was chill enough, you feel?”   

Keith isn’t sure about the mess of feelings that are building in his chest, too tangled to separate out, so he goes, “I’ll think about it,” and Lance goes, “Sure. Or we could just like, go on a road trip. Vegas. How do you feel about Vegas?”

“We’re not running away to Vegas, Lance.” 

“You say that now,” Lance says, openly grinning now, “But you see, tomorrow we’ll be driving into the sunset. You’ll be wearing my class ring. It’ll be like a movie.” 

“What kind of movies have you been watching?” 

“Ones where I make up better endings in my head later,” Lance tells him, and Keith makes him put the pho down so he can kiss all the honesty clean out of his mouth.  

 

*

 

The next morning, they make the drive together in Lance’s shitty sedan, with his shitty disco music on the radio. Lance rolls his eyes when Keith changes the station until the next song starts. 

“Oh, nice,” he says, changing his mind. “I take it back, this one’s good,” and spends the rest of the drive trying to keep up with Freddie Mercury’s falsetto.  

They know the story went to print last night. They know it’s in every gas station they pass, but for the first time, Lance doesn’t pull in to snag them a copy and they can see their bylines, even though he’s starting to run low on gas and kind of ought to. They walk into the office separately, a little after each other, so it looks they just met by the elevator. When Lance shoves a cigarette in his mouth and starts patting his pockets for his lighter, Keith nabs the thing out of his mouth and shoves it, unlit, into his own pants pocket. 

“God, you’re the worst,” Lance tells him. 

“Your face is the worst,” Keith retorts, and when Lance is clearly revving up for a reply, “Don’t you dare,” because he can just see the words  _ last night  _ hovering on Lance’s stupid lips, and they’re at least trying to be on the down-low. 

Then: 

“Think this one is going to be worse than the Lubos story?” Lance asks thoughtfully. 

“I think the whole world is going to be on fire,” Keith replies. 

He’s right. When they step in, the newsroom’s in chaos. Not the usual kind, either; and not even the going-to-print, last minute corrections, down to the wire deadline chaos with which weekly exposure has made Keith able to recognise from down in the damn parking garage. 

“Damn,” Lance lets out a low whistle, taking it all in, “You think -” at which point Shiro spots them hovering in the doorway. 

“KLANCE,” he yells. “Get your asses over here. You’re going to want to see this.” 

There’s an ancient television set hooked up, balanced precariously on top of the filing cabinets, and a bevy of their colleagues clustered around. They’re clutching paper coffee cups and staring at them both like they’ve just come back from a second goddamn moon landing. 

“Fucking hell,” Lance mutters under his breath, eyeing them all back, “Here goes nothing, hey?” and heads over after Keith, falling into step with him.

“What’s going on?” Keith asks, dread rising in him, staccato, despite himself - and turns to the television just in time to see a bunch of cop cars onscreen, raiding the Galra Corporation headquarters. “Holy fuck.”

It’s happening.  

“Good morning to you, too,” Shiro replies. 

“Yeah,” Keith says. Next to him, Lance has got that shit-eating grin on his face again. He can just sense it. “Yeah, it is.”

**Author's Note:**

> The Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis led to a mass rise in anti-Cuban sentiment during the 1960s. For more about that period, I’m actually in the process of writing a fic set in Florida in 1965.
> 
> You can find it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9675044/chapters/21853490). 
> 
> The Dean’s List is the American college equivalent of honour roll. 
> 
> Woodstock was a music festival that is now seen as the epitome of hippie culture. 
> 
> The song they’re listening to is Killer Queen by, uh, Queen.


End file.
